Mixing Rap Vocals?

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7khat

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hey , can anyone give me some tips about mixing rap vocals?
sometimes i really try but its like nothing works , the vocal is not really mixed with the track it feels like iv done nothing to it althou i did
i usually do a little Eq on my vocal n gain the high a lil bit to excite the vocal
then a reverb , not too much .. a little
then it try to find the fine volume level for it
but its not working i always thought it must be easy but i think its not..:confused:
 
WHEN I DO MY VOCALS I ADD THE FX 1ST IN THIS ORDER

EQ,COMPRESSION,EQ,DYNAMIC PROCESSING(CLASSIC SOFT KNEE),D'ESSER
THEN I RAISE THE WAVE FILE TO -1DB PEAKING

i pan the adllibs -75 and 75


the key word is less is more and listen!
 
7khat said:
hey , can anyone give me some tips about mixing rap vocals?
sometimes i really try but its like nothing works , the vocal is not really mixed with the track it feels like iv done nothing to it althou i did
i usually do a little Eq on my vocal n gain the high a lil bit to excite the vocal
then a reverb , not too much .. a little
then it try to find the fine volume level for it
but its not working i always thought it must be easy but i think its not..:confused:
Click to expand...

Nothing in mixing is easy. :p

The hardest part is just capturing a good vocal performance. How's your recording chain? Your room? And the rapper you're working with?

After that, given the relative lack of dynamics both in the rap genre and in modern music in general, I'd think you'd want to apply some relatively heavy compression to the vocal to help it even out and "sit" in the mix.
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
Nothing in mixing is easy. :p

The hardest part is just capturing a good vocal performance. How's your recording chain? Your room? And the rapper you're working with?

After that, given the relative lack of dynamics both in the rap genre and in modern music in general, I'd think you'd want to apply some relatively heavy compression to the vocal to help it even out and "sit" in the mix.
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i put light compression due to the mastering process incase when mastering they want to compress more
 
y-kause said:
i put light compression due to the mastering process incase when mastering they want to compress more
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Aye, but we're talking about the vocal track, not the entire mix. In a hip hop or rap production, your vocal isn't going to be what's giving your overall mix its transient peaks. When a mastering house goes through and runs your mix through a compressor, in other words, it's not predominantly the vocal that will be getting compressed, but rather your hi-hats and snare peaks. A well-mixed vocal just won't be producing those sorts of transients.

And furthermore, getting a vocal to "sit in the mix" is something that needs to be done IN the mix. I'm sure any number of the mastering engineers on this board will come in and make this point at greater depth, but when you send something off to be mastered, it should already be at a point where you can pop it into a CD player and it'll sound pretty damned good already. If you do and something sounds undercompressed, saying "I'll leave that because they put compression on the whole mix during mastering" just makes the ME's job harder.
 
y-kause said:
EQ,COMPRESSION,EQ,DYNAMIC PROCESSING(CLASSIC SOFT KNEE),D'ESSER
THEN I RAISE THE WAVE FILE TO -1DB PEAKING
!
Click to expand...

Why do you eq twice? And compression is a dynamic processor.
Raising the track to -1 may work in your mix but it may not help him.
 
TheChikenMaster said:
Why do you eq twice?
Click to expand...
Compression changes the tone of a track. Sometimes the best process is to EQ, compress, and then EQ again to counteract the tone change from the compression.

Sometimes it is best to only EQ once. All depends.
 
TheChikenMaster said:
Why do you eq twice? And compression is a dynamic processor.
Raising the track to -1 may work in your mix but it may not help him.
Click to expand...

because after the compression it might change the eq i did b4 the compression. i do that to make the vocal stand out again

that's me personally im giving him my advice on what i do

im not cretiqing the next mans hustle
 

Been going at the hip-hop & rap mixing for awhile now...

basically man:
what kinda mic are you using?
where n how is the environment you're recording in?
Next, how is tha sound going into your computer: stock sound card, usb/firewire interface, soundcard?
Then how loud are you recording at?
Are you using any compression? or a limiter?

I usually use a graphic equalizer recording going in. Basically take 60hz out of the picture and work from there.

But the only way YOU WILL learn is thru practice.

If you're like me...you gotta see it to learn it.

I used to rent studio time and do my thing and learned thru watching and learning by what I saw tha engineer do. I would ask alot of questions and go home and write it down.

I guess I was sorta an apprentice except he didn't know I was just paying to learn:)





 
tnx for the reply all of you

my soundcard is m-audio fast track pro
my mic is m-Audio NOVA condenser
i record in my room
i have been in commercial studios i checked the accapellas i got from those studios n the ones iv recorded in my room
there is no big diffrence actually , of course the one iv recorded in studio's are better
i can upload one of my vocals for you if you want
tnx for the comments guys
 
Chibi Nappa said:
Compression changes the tone of a track. Sometimes the best process is to EQ, compress, and then EQ again to counteract the tone change from the compression.

Sometimes it is best to only EQ once. All depends.
Click to expand...

Very good an endless cycle eq compress eq. The first eq seems very unnecessary. If anything according to the way you explained it very illogical. But if sounds good to you what can I say.
 
Something I find that helps is giving the right rapper the right track. Even though a rapper isn't using the same range a singer would their voices still have tones and qualities that suit different instrumentation. Some beats just do not suit some rappers and if that is the case then you're already fighting a losing battle. Being a good producer in my eyes is knowing when to say ''this isn't working lets try a different beat''

I've been lucky early on to work with some good rappers who work quickly. We usually start by testing the mic in different parts of the room and at different distances from their mouth to see which gives us the best possible take. We then record the same 1st verse over a bunch of different beats. Get some food come back and listen to them all and decide which one we like best then we go and finish off recording to the one we liked the most. Often the beat chosen isn't the one we were supposed to record to.

As for the mix down side of things. I'm still learning hence why I'm here :) . I usually leave the vocals flat maybe a tad and I mean a tad eq adjust, some light reverb and echo and then some light compression. Like I said earlier. Most of the guys I've worked with have been good in the studio and the takes haven't needed much work.
 
TheChikenMaster said:
Very good an endless cycle eq compress eq. The first eq seems very unnecessary. If anything according to the way you explained it very illogical. But if sounds good to you what can I say.
Click to expand...

Not really - remember that an EQ changes the relative energy of different frequency bands, while the compressor changes the relative energy of the whole sound. So, if you've got a lot going on in the bass frequencies that you don't really want in the final track, putting an EQ before your compressor lets you pull out a lot of that energy so it doesn't in turn play much of a role in the way a compressor is triggered.

On the flip side, if you want to boost something in a frequency range, if you do that before the compressor then most of that boost is going to get squashed down when the augmented signal hits the compressor.

So, I think using an EQ before and after the compressor can make perfect sense - use the first to make some tweaks to the "tone" of the track hitting the compressor, and then the second to make it fit into the mix better. If you know for a fact that you don't want anything under, say, 120hz on your lead guitar, then low-pass it pre-condenser, just so any of that low end boom can't impact the way the compressor is triggered. Once you have a nice, compressed sound you're happy with, if you think it needs a little bit of a boost around 1.2khz to jump out, then add that with a post-compressor EQ just so that boost doesn't push the track above the compression threshold here and there or get leveled down.

Consider the function of the units - sometimes, it makes sense to compress before EQ and sometimes it makes sense to EQ before compression. There are certainly times when you'll want to do both.
 
Chibi Nappa said:
Compression changes the tone of a track. Sometimes the best process is to EQ, compress, and then EQ again to counteract the tone change from the compression.

Sometimes it is best to only EQ once. All depends.
Click to expand...

When you talk about EQing twice, what exactly do you mean? All of the tweaks I do on tracks in my DAW don't touch the raw track, which means I can EQ a track, put a compressor on top of that, and then go back and tweak the original EQ to get it the way I like it, and the net result is that the raw track has only one EQ applied to it.
 
dobro said:
When you talk about EQing twice, what exactly do you mean? All of the tweaks I do on tracks in my DAW don't touch the raw track, which means I can EQ a track, put a compressor on top of that, and then go back and tweak the original EQ to get it the way I like it, and the net result is that the raw track has only one EQ applied to it.
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This is the first thing that made sense here:)
 
TheChikenMaster said:
This is the first thing that made sense here:)
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Its more or less been explained by several people in several posts. What still doesn't make sense about the idea of EQ'ing both before and after compression?

DrewPeterson7 explained it well so I won't spend ages just retyping what he has already written. Read his post, then stop whinging about your inability to understand something.


On the other hand, looking back to the post that started this whole discussion, I do question whether y-kause realises that his "Dynamic Processing Classic Soft Knee" is in fact just a compressor :p

In any case, its all a simple matter of understanding your tools.
 
mattr said:
DrewPeterson7 explained it well so I won't spend ages just retyping what he has already written. Read his post, then stop whinging about your inability to understand something.
Click to expand...

Oh I understand, it just happens to be a pointless method in my opinion:)
 
Pointless?

Ok, so lets say you have a good take of a performance, but when you come to fit it into the mix you find that it has some fairly common issues such as a boomy low end and some fairly wild dynamics - maybe this could have been sorted at tracking, or maybe it was unavoidable to an extent... either way you are stuck with it now, unless you are in a position to retrack. However careful you are during tracking, we've all been in this situation one time or another.

So you now have to put your tools to use and try and make the best out of this track.

I would probably start by performing some "surgical" EQ, taming the problematic low end and getting the track 'most of the way' tonal-wise. Its not quite ready for the mix yet, but its at a point where you would be happy to smush it with a compressor (and have the compressor react how you would like it to). After compression, you then might want to do what I would term 'musical EQ'... the final touches and shaping to sit it into the mix, maybe some small boosts that would have been inappropriate prior to compression.


That's quite an extreme example based on the idea that you are starting with a track that sounds like ass, but really, this kind of 'shaping of the sound' can apply to anything. It mainly comes down to the compression... knowing how the compressors will react to a signal... knowing how it sounds if you push it in different ways... etc etc. I've given the example of EQing before compression to remove a problematic low end that might screw with the compression you want to achieve, but conversely you might want to play this to your advantage and EQ in such a way that the compressor reacts differently but in a desirable way to the effect that you wished to achieve (though if you got to this point you would probably start using sidechaining instead).
 
Very good........ thanks for the education. In fact I'll give you reps for it(not that you need em) you explained it so clearly. However this method happens to be one my pet peeves like autotune. I hate autotune with a bitter passion, lets not get into that now.:D
 
TheChikenMaster said:
Very good........ thanks for the education. In fact I'll give you reps for it(not that you need em) you explained it so clearly. However this method happens to be one my pet peeves like autotune. I hate autotune with a bitter passion, lets not get into that now.:D
Click to expand...

Huh? What does thinking about EQ and compression in your gain staging have to do with autotune? How is that a pet peeve?
 
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